Court of Appeals overturns Risinger conviction

The murder conviction of Joshua Risinger, 31, a man found guilty of intentionally setting fire to his own trailer in order to kill a disabled man, Jeffrey Givan, in March 2017, was overturned by the Indiana Court of Appeals earlier this month. Risinger had been sentenced to 60 years with the Indiana Department of Corrections after being found guilty, but mentally ill, at the end of his November 2018 trial.

In an opinion filed Dec. 9, the IN Court of Appeals ruled the investigators who questioned Risinger after the fire and the discovery of Givan’s body violated his Miranda rights (a suspect’s right to remain silent and to have access to an attorney) by continuing to ask questions after Risinger told them multiple times over the course of the interviews he didn’t want to talk anymore. Nonetheless, Risinger continued to answer questions and talk with police, and video footage of those interviews were shown in court.

Before the trial, which began Nov. 26, 2018, the opinion noted Risinger’s attorney tried twice to suppress the statements Risinger made in the interviews.

“Risinger contends that because he was suffering from a mental illness and detectives continued to question him after he told them he was done talking, his statements were not a product of his free will,” the opinion reads.

The opinion states, according to the Miranda case, the United States Supreme Court concluded, “If the individual indicates in any manner, at any time prior to or during questioning, that he wishes to remain silent, the interrogation must cease.” However, the opinion continued, saying this isn’t a total prohibition against further questioning, but “it must be shown on a case by case basis that the authorities ‘scrupulously honored’ the defendant’s right to cut off questioning at any time, and that he knew and understood these rights and voluntarily waived them … The State bears the burden of proving that the suspect’s right to remain silent was scrupulously honored.”

This burden of proof, the appellate court concluded, was not met.

“We conclude that Risinger’s waivers of his Miranda rights and statements were voluntary," the opinion reads. "His statement, however, 'I’m done talking,' was an unequivocal invocation of his right to remain silent pursuant to Miranda, and the detectives’ continuation of questioning thereafter was a failure to scrupulously honor that right … The judgement of the trial court is reversed.”

Read more about what this will mean to the case going forward, see the story in this week's Salem Leader.